Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2290: Becoming a Better Man With Jason Khalipa

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Anxiety is an alarm bell. (1:42) Finding balance amongst polar extremes. (4:02) Demystifying the stigma around disordered eating. (6:38) Creating autonomy with your kids around healthy eating. (16:54) How training hard is the THING in our control for when life gets difficult. (21:39) Learning how to talk more effectively to our children. (24:50) Taking extreme ownership. (25:59) Providing and protecting as a father. (28:27) Showing up as a dad for each of his kids. (32:13) Communication is the key. (35:27) Reflecting on the current state of the fitness industry. (37:48) Anorexia as a social contagion. (39:57) Encouraging people to work out and train. (43:05) The evolution of his ju-jitsu training. (49:09) “Will it matter in 5 seconds, 5 minutes, or 5 years?” (54:34) Unlocking your potential by doing hard things. (55:29) Train Hard with Jason Khalipa. (1:01:15) Support Ava’s Kitchen. (1:05:20) Having empathy. (1:07:17) Balancing social media with your kids. (1:09:28) Choosing your hard. (1:20:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Eight Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** Get $200 off plus free shipping on the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. Stay cool this summer with Eight Sleep, now shipping within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia! ** March Promotion: MAPS Anabolic | MAPS Anabolic Advanced 50% off! ** Code MARCH50 at checkout ** As Many Reps As Possible – Book by Jason Khalipa Ava's Kitchen Minnesota Starvation Experiment - Wikipedia Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders Refeeding Syndrome: Symptoms, Treatment & Risk Factors Train Hard // Jason Khalipa Eating disorders may be contagious: study | Reuters Mind Pump #1822: Wim Hof On How To Control Your Immune System With Breathwork Jordan Peterson's Message to Young Men - YouTube Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men Apogee Strong Mind Pump #2132: Six Reasons Men Today Are Weak Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Jason Khalipa (@jasonkhalipa) Instagram Wim Hof (@iceman_hof) Instagram Jordan Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson) Instagram Tim Kennedy (@timkennedymma) Instagram Ben Greenfield (@bengreenfieldfitness) Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we interviewed our good friend,

Jason Kallipa, he's a major figure in the CrossFit world and the fitness world, one of the leaders. And in today's episode, we talk about his vulnerabilities, family life, how to be a better man, a better husband. We talk about business and of course, we talk about fitness. This is one of his best most vulnerable episodes. He's a good man. You're going to love this episode. You're going to love listen to what he has to talk about. By the way, you can find him on Instagram at Jason Khalifa. And his book is as many reps as possible. By the way,

you can donate to his fund. He has a fund set up to help children. It's called avaskitchen.org. Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Eight Sleep. This is a device that goes on your bed that uses AI to monitor the temperature of the bed and maximize the quality of your sleep. There's nothing like this in the world. It is cutting edge technology to give you the best sleep possible. Go check them out. Go to 8sleep.com forward slash mine pump, get $200 off plus free shipping on the pod cover by 8sleep.

By the way, it ships within the U S Canada, the UK, other countries in the EU select countries and Australia. So go check them out. Also this month's sale maps, anabolic and maps, anabolic advanced both 50% off. If you're interested, go to maps fitness products.com and then use the code March 30, sorry, March 50 for that discount. All right. Here comes the show. There was the Minnesota starvation experiment. You're not familiar with it? No.

So it's it's so the Minnesota starvation experiment was in 1944 through 1945 the investigation was designed to determine the psychological and severe prolonged dietary restriction of the effectiveness of dietary rehabilitation strategies. So based what they did is during the war, they gave people an option to either go and be drafted for the war, or they could be a part of this starvation thing. So what they did is they, for three months,

they gave them 3,000 calories a day, every day, for these like 50 guys that participated. After three months, they dropped them down to 800 or 1,000 calories and they put them through manual labor for months. And what's really fascinating about this, if you read into it, is that these people that were normal people, when taken nutrition

from like normal to starvation mode, after a certain amount of time, anxiety, depression, and all these thoughts start to like sink in because, neurologically, their brain is no longer firing in the same way because your body is taking the fuel source from your brain and fueling it to other areas like your glands that are necessary more so than your brain, your fingertips, and it no longer can control your temperature, all that kind of stuff. So it was interesting for me that you take someone who's just normal and you're, it no longer can control your temperature or all that kind of stuff. So it was interesting for me that like you take someone who's just normal and you put them in this state and they could still develop those things.

Then you take someone who's already like maybe preconditioned to it a little bit and they start not eating. And that's what we're seeing now. And it's really, it's really a daunting what happens in the brain more than anything that we could talk about. It's crazy. It makes perfect sense because, um, one of the greatest, um, most common sources of stress and death, uh, for humans, for most of human history was starvation.

It was just lack of food. So it makes sense that you're all your alarm bells would go off. Anxiety is an alarm bell. Um, all, you know, this like, like hyper vigilance, like what's going on, like I need more food and whatever. And then what you said physiologically, your body has to divert resources to essential functions, which means you lose other functions. And, um, you'll probably slowly lose your mind, you know, is, is what it looks like.

That's exactly what happens. Yeah. Yeah. So it's scary because I sometimes think too that like our space we do more harm than good because it's like it's almost like we have these polar extremes. Are there, you're the extreme obese, I don't give a shit about diet or an exercise, I'm lazy adults of this, or we tend to go the complete opposite extreme where we're measuring, we're counting, we're weighing, we're weighing,

we're restricting, we're dieting hard, we're training hard, we do it's like when we need to find somewhere this balance in the middle, as humans we have a really hard time of doing that. We tend to live in these polar extremes and neither one of them are truly healthy. And arguably, the one that looks healthy is sometimes maybe the most dangerous because it's disguised. It's obvious when you're sitting on a couch, 100 pounds overweight eating Doritos, that's not healthy. But it can be very deceiving that, you know, eating chicken or tilapia and, you know, asparagus four times a day and working out twice a day, how could that be bad? I mean, you're exercising and you're not eating Doritos, right?

So you have to ask yourself, like, man and you're not eating Doritos, right? So you have to ask yourself like, man, is that one as dangerous or more dangerous because it's masked in health? Dude, for sure. Yeah, I'll tell you what. I mean, going through what we've gone through in the last like little while, I don't think I'll ever say to another person again, especially not a young girl, like you look great or you look like you've, I mean, I've never said to a young girl, you look like you thinned out, I've never said that, but I'll never say to another girl,

like a young girl again, like, wow, you've changed so much, you look great. I don't think I'll ever say that again. Because it insinuates and it feeds the value. That's your value. And it's, it's something that I think, um, we need to be more aware of, especially with the young girls and young boys, right? Just man, the whole journey that I've been on for the last like six months,

it's just been very eye-opening. Could continue. This is like, uh, yeah, you're right. It's not just girls. It's boys too. Uh, Sal's been saying this on the podcast for a long time, long before I even had my son, that, uh, you know, when we talk about, uh, health, fitness, nutrition around kids that you don't ever attach it to the way they look. It's always performance. You know, it's always like, Oh, wow, man, you really got after it. Like you must have fueled your body or like you always attach it to things like that and not this, how they look, because you have no idea how they're going to interpret that

later on in life. Are you able to fill in a little bit about what you mean, what you're going through? Yeah. So, you know, at a high, high level, I mean, I'll just start by saying this. Today, my daughter is currently four, five days into a 24 seven residency for needing disorder today, right now. So this is like, super fresh. We had obviously scheduled this podcast a while ago. I don't know exactly how I want to talk about this. This is all new to me. I don't know exactly how I want to talk about this. This is all new to me, but I do know that talking about it and is going to be healthy for me and is going to be also healthy for somebody listening.

Somebody listening is going to be like, dude, I get that guy or I'm in that situation or I can now look for those signs to avoid it. And for that reason alone, I feel like I should talk about it. And I also want to demystify. You know, like I've, my family and I, like my daughter had a leukemia battle

for years and years and years. And you would get support all over the place. And, you know, but now here we are a couple of years later and it's not the same thing with mental health. It's like, I almost feel like when you talk about it with people, it's like, whoa, like, like you feel like, you feel like you're on an island because you don't feel like you could talk about these things

because either they pass judgment or they don't understand or people are so afraid of it, they won't even have a conversation with you about it. So it's been very interesting working through this particular challenge. And I need to find a way to communicate it with people because whereas with leukemia, it seemed like everybody wanted to jump on and support with this It seems like a definitely our close family and friends

Of course want to jump on to support and I haven't publicly put this out on Instagram or any that kind of stuff But it does seem like there's like this stigma around it And I'd like to be able to demystify that because I've learned a lot of a less You know, what do you think that is do you think it's, I think people don't know what to do or what to offer. Yeah. And I'm not passing. Right. But how do I help you with that?

Like I could help you. Oh, look, can I donate? Can I, I don't know. But still you would think the same. I don't know. Maybe it's because maybe because like, leukemia like gets us and, you know, there attacks you or attacks the body, whereas this is

something that's like self-inflicted in a sense. And so people don't know how to attacks you or attacks the body, whereas this is something that's like self-inflicted in a sense. And so people don't know how to handle that or communicate around that or what to do for you in that situation. Yeah, and like even like that term, like I would avoid using the term self-inflicted from someone with a mental illness,

meaning like, and I'm not like, I'm just saying like from what I'm learning now, it's like, it's like's like dude people with mental health problems Like those are serious problems and these things like take over their brains And it's like a whole different person talking and within them and I didn't understand it until I've seen it now first-hand Yeah, and for that I have much more compassion now than I did before like before I'd be like dude like Why wouldn't the you know, you see someone on the streets or whatever it is you're like why wouldn't that person just like go get a job or like and I can't

necessarily that or why would that person that you need to sort of not just fix it like go eat food but it's not that simple and and I'm learning that every day more and more and more and that's one of the messages I want to get out is like do we need to as a as a society just have more compassion for people? Because you never know what people are going through. And when that voice gets in their head, it's super strong. It takes over. It takes over.

And it takes over strong. Yeah. Were there early signs? Like, when did you start to notice any of this? Well, the reason why I think it's important to talk about is that we are in the fitness space, and many people listen to this podcast, you're in the fitness space. And I would caution people in the fitness space and many people listen to this podcast from the fitness space and I would caution people in the future and this is just my perspective. I would, I would caution myself in the future from doing like challenges or like so for example I've done

like a 40 day just meet or I've done Paleo. I've done every diet you could think of for me right but your kids watch and they're paying attention. They see everything and they hear everything. And I think in the future, I'll be much more aware of how we talk about those things or how if someone in your family is on a quote unquote, low carb diet because they're trying to lean out for the summertime, look better in a bathing suit,

I'd be much more careful the way I talk about these things in the future. And I think for people in the fitness space, you know, you ask about signs, you know, for me, it's like my daughter's been through a very difficult journey. You know, she was on a lot of steroids for a very long time and a lot of chemotherapy. And she came out of that

and I was really encouraging her to exercise. And the whole goal was like, just move once a day. Let's just sweat once a day. And at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. I really did. Like I thought, just sweat, just move. Like let's just move. Right. And that turned into like something really successful, like and really diligent and solid exercise. We were putting on strength. We were, we were looking at as like strength is beauty, like, like building muscle. We weren't talking about weight loss

and running all the time, we were talking about, let's train the way we all know how to train. And then the food started becoming a really beautiful diet. Like if any of you guys looked at you back, holy crap, this person eats super clean. Like not Uber-duber clean, but super clean. Like we'd still have some dessert, but for the most part we eat really well. And then over time it just a little bit more restriction and a little bit more restriction and then

and then we just saw like the restriction just from one point something triggered that activity. And so my lesson learned for families is that if you start seeing these regimented things lesson learned for families is that if you start seeing these regimented things, okay, start paying attention, you've seen it. But then once it starts getting a little bit more extreme, I would encourage you to go find a therapist at that immediate moment and not waiting, because we saw this and we would be like, oh, you know, like, we would try and handle it, but we're not experts in that space. We should have, and I'm speaking for myself, I think we should have asserted another conversation earlier.

These things flourish in the dark was what I was told. Think, you know, I have some experience with this and that's, I remember someone told me that, like you have to bring light to it, be get other people involved early on, otherwise it starts to flourish and grow in the dark. Um, you know, a lot of kids that go through this, sometimes it's body image and sometimes it's control.

What you're telling me about what your daughter went through, she probably fell out of control for a long time. Chemo and steroids and all that scariness and what's going on for years. So this may feel like a way that she can, I have this control, I can deny. I can say no, and I can reject the hunger. I can, I have mastery over it. And that's what it may feel like.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, I mean, look, every child's different. You know, I think that it didn't help the fact that she saw old pictures of her and she felt that if she ate a certain way, she would look that certain way and, you know. How do you get to, when you go to a 24 seven facility, what are they, how do they identify that? Is it nutrient deficiency?

Is it like, okay, we need to jump on this ASAP? Yeah, I mean, look, I'm learning a lot this process. I'm currently, I just finished a book called Sick Enough. I thought it was okay. It was a little bit more medically focused. So for people who was okay. It was a little bit more medically focused. So for people who are like, it was a little bit more medically focused. And with the nutrients,

it's just once you go, it goes so fast. Meaning when you see the signs, then it escalates like we went to therapy and then it just escalated like that. I mean, and all of a sudden what happens is when you start depleting your body of these carbohydrates and these, and food as a fuel, then your brain starts to not be able to function as well. And it just feeds the eating disorder even more.

So you go from like, it just like, it's like zero to a hundred. Cause you're, you're, you're here, you're on like a playing field. It's like a chain reaction. And then all of a sudden, right. Your body isn't getting the fuel it needs over and over and over again for like a week, oh, two weeks, three weeks, a month, all of a sudden then it no longer, then you're getting cold all the time.

You can't regulate your temperature. And then all of a sudden your brain starts stops functioning the way it should. And at that point, it's very, very difficult to reason with someone because they're no longer looking at it through that lens anymore. You can't reason with them because the disorder is taken over so strongly and their brain isn't functioning correctly. And that is a really scary time. And so that's where you got to refuel, you got to refeed. And there's a whole thing

called refeeding syndrome. And it's a whole thing. You got to get the brain function again before you could have any real, uh, forward progress. Yeah. Like the therapy won't work until we get you fed. We, we got to get you fed. So like in the hospital, for example, they do a, a, a laying down blood pressure, standing up blood pressure. They do a heart rate and, uh, they also look at your electrolytes for this thing called

refigging syndrome, which is in either case, when you look at those variabilities from a metrics perspective, you're looking for certain things. If they think that it's not on target, you know, it's how long, how long does she have to be there? A while until they did, they determined like, okay, we can move to this next stage type of deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How hard was it to get her to even go to the facility?

Was that really hard? That's the hardest part. Okay. Not hard. And I'm speaking from my experience. So if you're listening to this, you're like, dude, my daughter had to do the same thing. It was the hardest experience in my life.

I'd say it's been the heart. It's been very hard for us, but she didn't fight us because it's like you're talking to a shell of who that person is. But she didn't fight us because it's like you're talking to a shell of who that person is. Yeah. It is, it has been life changing for me in terms of I've dedicated my life to health and fitness. I started at the gym when I was 15, just like a lot of you guys.

And I've seen so many people get life changer results from workouts and fitness. But seeing the way that nutrition, if not appropriately understood or managed or if you don't get the fuel you need, the impact you have on your brain has just been like something I've never experienced in my life. It's like, it's like, and so you got to refeed, and then you got to quadruple the calories. So right now, you're filling a hole. Oh, dude. And then they get in a state of like where they like quad like quadruplets like she's I don't even know she's probably like three four five thousand calories a day right now like and it needs to be that way for a while yeah you know I have four kids I have two that are like older from her first marriage so I have an 18 and 14

year old and then I have two little ones right And the way that I handled their food and how we talked about food was actually quite different. One thing that I learned with the younger ones that I think I made a mistake with the older ones was, and we're only like a generation or two into this. And so it's not necessarily our fault because you go to our parents, especially my parents, my parents were poor immigrants, but you go back to my parents, my grandparents for sure, they had different problems to handle when it came to food. And it was, hey, we got food today, we're not going to have it tomorrow, you better eat this type of deal. This is how my parents grew up, because they were poor. This is how my grandparents grew up. This is in Sicily. So they raised me that way, right? Like my grandma

would put a timer, make sure you eat all your food in this minute of time, they pay us money. She can eat the most. Like I grew up in this dysfunctional environment around food and I thought it was totally normal. So then when my older kids, I thought, okay, I'm going to talk about performance and I'm going to say, well, you can't eat this unless you finish this first. But that wasn't even the, it was better. But that wasn't even the right approach. The right approach in this world, which is there's food is everywhere. It's everywhere. What you want to teach little kids isn't necessarily what's healthy and not healthy. You want to teach them autonomy. So what you do is you create an environment where here are your options and you make sure that

there's a couple of things you know they like, but there's other things that they could try and then they choose and it's up to them. And if they just want to eat all raspberries today, then that's totally fine. They're not going to starve, that's for sure. And you continue to reintroduce, and you give them the ability to feel autonomous. And then little by little, the nutrition stuff comes in,

versus what I did with my older ones, which was, this is healthy, this is not healthy. And what I did is I took the control away from them. And what they'll do is they'll try to exert that control back at some point, typically when they're adolescent, when they feel like they, you know, when we all do that as adolescents. So it's weird, man. It's totally different than the way, you know, previous generations grew up. It is not the same world where, where, um, you know, you.

I also think what Jason's saying too, that we have to be careful, sometimes it's not even what you say to them, it's what you do and what they see. Oh, bro, I mean... I mean, I don't know if you know this or not, but there's, as far as I know, we're the only fitness company,

nine years in business now, that has never done a challenge or you ever used a before and after picture. We do that on purpose. Never done it. And our marketing team fucking hates us for it, and everybody's condemned us and said, you could be so much bigger and we've had way more success, but we refuse to do it because we understand

some of these ramifications of that. And so it's not always what we say to our kids. Sometimes it's just what we do and the way we act in front of them. You know? Yeah. And I think that, you know, again, something I've had to take to, I was, I was beating myself up about this really bad. And one of my business partners is like, look, Jason out of anybody I know,

he's like, you're the guy who works out a lot, but you eat everything, whatever you want, whenever you want, you just, you, I don't, I don't can, like I'm the guy who like, if you had cookies right here, I'd be down. Like it doesn't bother me at all. And I thought that over time I've done a good job of teaching balance to the kids, showing them that we need to get movement in I thought if you had asked me I think that we have done an incredible job but

There's always things you look back on you're like People pick up on little subtle things also people might it might be environmental factors like I The point I'm trying to make is as parents We need to be aware of all of these things and really reflect on them on a more regular basis. What are my kids consuming? What are their friends talking about? What type of other factors? And then if you see certain signs, little things,

you got to intervene and shine light on it like you're talking about immediately. Like not a month, not two months, not three months later immediately is my initial takeaway. When you're, when you're talking to your daughter, was she able to articulate what she was going through? Was she able to articulate like, you know,

how she was perceiving food and all these things? Like, was there any kind of open dialogue with that? Or was it very much like a shutdown? Well, no, because it started off slow and then it sped up really fast. So, you know, it started off with, you know, her assumption was that carbohydrates were bad. And her perception became reality, meaning like the disorder just takes over you. And it's something that I've never, like I said, I've never witnessed it before.

And it gives me a lot more perspective when I'm talking to people about this type of things, because it's a voice and that voice becomes very strong. And so yeah, we tried to have those conversations. We really did. But the more conversations we had, and the more we try if you're a good parent, you do not saying that you're supposed to, but I think you care so much. How can you not look back and be like, what did I do? And all that stuff. Yeah. But you don't know that, that like, she, like she got leukemia at a young age. Okay. That you, you can't control that.

That's a trauma. She went through that process of fighting that and came out victorious, but that was a very challenging situation. Now she's in a situation where she feels, I'm telling you, she feels like she may have control over something. So, and I'm telling you this, not to beat yourself up, but rather you're probably the best dad to have in a situation like this. It's hard as fuck, but you're probably the best guy to be in that, you know,

like, well, and that brings up a really good point, man. It's like, you know, I have, and just like all of us sitting here have had to overcome challenges in life. But that was competing at the CrossFit Games, having Jim shut down during COVID, that really sucked. Obviously, leukemia thing was a pretty big deal, but this is another challenge. And this one's been really, really difficult

because of the point you were making earlier, where you want to just be like, dude, just like, come on, just, just, just, why don't you just have this? Right? Like it's not like the physical change. Like it's not like someone broke their arm. It's like, wait, why, why can't you just like snap out of it, man? Like, you know, and that's been the hardest part, right? Because you, you, you, and, and, and it affects the way they are and, and the way that they show up and it's, it they are and the way that they show up. And it's hard, but everything we do,

I believe in more today than I did a week ago. And I believe everything in what we do today, more than I did five years ago, meaning I believe that working out fitness, training hard is the thing in our control to prepare us for when life gets difficult. And I'm a firm believer in that. And as of lately, I am immediately waking up,

hitting hard cardio, sauna, cold plunge, and it sets my day. Before that, I wasn't doing it very well and it was just affecting me. Now I know that every day, whether it's these train hard men's club meetups or whether they're getting after it, I'm trying to put myself in the right mindset

to show up for my family, to show up for my friends, to show up at work the best I can. And I know that if I do that, I'm in a better spot. I was just going to ask you, how do you manage the personal? Because I mean, I have teenagers and little ones and you go through your challenges. And that's hard, man. How do you, what are you doing for yourself right now to keep yourself going? Well, I mean, yeah, this has been a very difficult situation.'s it's funny because if you if I had had this same conversation three days ago I don't even know if I'd be able to talk to you about this but I

Just kind of came the conclusion along with talking to some close friends mine like do I have no other option like? Step the fuck up. Let's get this going like this is the way it's gonna go Like we are gonna we are gonna beat this, just like we beat another stuff, and we're gonna get through this as a family stronger than we did before. And that's my mindset, but I need to back up my mindset with intentional action, meaning like understanding what's in my control,

focusing on educating myself, and then also taking care of myself and prioritizing my own fitness. And so for me, it's not the drugs and alcohol or any of that kind of stuff that I fall to. It's for me, I want to use fitness to lean into more to get me in the right mindset. Anything that the therapist or the doctors are shedding light on that's new or that you didn't understand? Like, what are you learning from them right now? Like, are you feeling very supported by them? Or are you feeling like an island where you have to figure this out yourself?

I think at the beginning, we felt like we were definitely on an island in the beginning because, and the book I was reading, we mentioned it earlier, it was called Sick Enough. I almost felt like that's the way it was. I felt like the system is broken in the sense that like the kid isn't sick enough. So there is no, there's, there was very difficult to find help and we, we were not limited by insurances or finances

or anything like that. So we were trying, but the kid wasn't sick enough. And so the support system wasn't quite there. And I feel like that's something I'm learning about the system, but in regards to the therapist and whatnot, it's just learning how to talk more effectively to the children, learning how to talk more effectively to the children, learning how to talk more effectively to both my kids

and how the relationship won't have around triggers and stuff like that. Stuff that I would think would be kind of fluffy if you had asked me, like maybe like a year ago, it's not so fluffy anymore to me. You know what I'm saying? It's very real to me. Are you seeing someone for yourself, a therapist for yourself? Yeah, so I've had like a, I hate to, the best way I could describe this, if I'd have like a, I've had like a sports therapist

for years because of competing in cross-facings, which then led me in a having him work with me for business, but I am now pursuing someone specific for this type of thing. Because this guy could help you optimize performance, you know, lead your team, but that's totally different than what I want to talk about. Right? I want to talk about. Right.

I want to talk about this stuff. Yeah. Do you have someone or you're looking for someone? I'm like, oh, well, I have like a few resources. I got someone for you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

That's important because as a parent, you have to have that support because it's hard for your kid and it's hard as a parent. You got to, you don't know what to do. What's the right thing to do and what direction do I go and I'll fuck. I'm not sleeping and you know, okay, what do I do? How do I do this for myself now? And it's crazy. I mean, considering you're just now going through this,

I feel like you're, you're in a pretty good headspace. The fact that you, you do seem to have empathy for yourself. You do though, still at the same time, take ownership of things that could have done better. I mean, I feel like you are the right dad to go through this, you know, as shitties that is, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, it's kind of like one of those things I wrote that book.

And we talked about this awhile ago called Amrat mentality. And, and after my daughter got sick, I basically wrote this book. I had an idea for another book and I wrote this book basically saying like, if anybody was going to get sick, shibin us because we had our fitness and lock. We had our finances in lock. We had our close family relationships in lock because we dedicated time and attention to each one.

We were really prioritizing each one of our life. I still feel the same way today. Um, I don't wish this on anybody. I don't wish this on ourselves. Like, and we're currently going through it. So it's not like I'm talking about this in the future. You know, do you have a spiritual practice? No, so I mean, that's, that's something I actually wanted to talk to you about in

the future. Um, no, you know, so you used the term, I was listening to you, not that long ago, you use the term Christmas Catholic. Yeah. I think you called it. Yeah. So my family and I, we, we, my dad came from Iran. My mom, um, came from an island.

She's her family's from Sicily, actually. And, uh, I was raised, um, Catholic. My children go to Catholic school, but, uh, I don't think we, we don't don't we're not we're not as deep into it, you know, so it is something that I explored when she was sick with leukemia and now it's probably something I dive into even more now. Yeah, it's a it's for me it's provided a tremendous sense of guidance and meaning and purpose and it really takes a lot off of you, a lot. So we'll talk after. How's the other kid taking it? I mean, that's a whole another layer, right? Is he older or younger?

Younger. Yeah, younger, okay. And that's a whole other layer about being a dad. You know, it's funny. So in 2008, I started a company, CrossFit Company. We opened a bunch of gyms, did a bunch of things is underneath the NC Fit umbrella. About six months ago, we started launching in January,

we actually launched a brand called Train Hard. What it was about for me is not for gym owners and coaches. I'll get back to your question, but I'm just sharing how I get there. I'm with you. Is that we launched Train Hard. Train Hard is a online app, but also a community, mainly for men, but also a lot of women have engaged it,

about this theory of like train, protect, provide. That's like what I, as I've evolved in my fitness journey, that's where I'm at, meaning like I grapple regularly. I train in the gym and in the garage because I want to be able to protect my family, meaning run, jump, climb, fight if necessary. But I want to have those skills. Like if my, haven't you seen those videos where like a stroller is going in the street, the guy has to run to it? Like I don't want to be that guy who can't run. That's important to me. But what's also important

to me is to provide. And when we think about providing, it's funny. Most people think about in terms of money. And I think that's a factor. Like if you show up, if you work hard, you show up at work, you have more energy, you have more whatever, you're probably gonna make more money. But also providing experiences, like going and doing stuff, like my son, every day I get home, let's go play football, let's go do this, let's go do that.

I wanna have the fitness to never say no to him. So train hard is about protect and provide. The hardest part about my daughter going into a 24-7 care facility is that it takes one of those things that's very important to me and it takes away, right? It's the protect piece, you know? So I show up to this place and I'm like, anyways, I'm very overly cautious about her. Her, I care, right? But with my son, it's tough, right? Because he's 10 and you know, his sister's gone.

So some of the things we've done, I think the hardest part is being at home. So we haven't really spent much time at home because you know, we always have, every night we'd have family dinner. Yeah. So I think what we've done as parents is here's another thing I did. I told myself I would never buy a video game console for the house ever.

And I bought a PS5 for my son because you got to pick and choose your battles. If I think this could be a way that him and I can connect over Madden and he could kind of like freeze mine a little bit playing a video game, like I'm good with it. If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said no. So those are the type of things we're doing, not just buying him stuff, but like we're prioritizing more family time where every single night we're at our in-laws for dinner.

All we could do is just like love, love, love, love, love, because he's going through, you know, a lot more than he gives off. And he's also gone through a lot before. Right. Right. So we have to try and be aware of that gives off. And he's also gone through a lot before. Right. Right? So we have to try and be aware of that as parents. And it's hard. It is hard because we have our own shit going on.

It's like, you know, like for example, in two weeks is Ava's kitchen. That's an annual fundraiser for pediatric cancer. It's March 2nd here. That's the one you put on, right? Yep. And we've raised millions of dollars. And someone asked this, who's close me, it was like, Hey, you're not going to have it because she's in a home.

I said, I said, we're absolutely going to have it because, because this, this event isn't about our family. It's about all the people we're helping. It's bigger than us. And like this situation is not about me. It's about the family. Like it's bigger than me. Do I need to prioritize my own health?

Do I need to do my things? Yeah, but then afterwards, I'm done feeling sorry for myself and I gotta show up for my kids, right? And my wife. Yeah, yeah. How are, I was like, I always love talking to dads that have multiple kids.

Like what's communicating like to your son and your daughter? Like how's it, how are they different? And how do you have to show up as a dad different with each of them? Oh, I mean, it's night and day. I mean, you know, prior to this situation, right? My daughter's very girly, you know, is very interested in like shopping and, and face products and whatever.

And my son is extremely like sports driven. So we connect through football, baseball, whatever, whatever. And, uh, you know, I speak to him and we react differently to different things. So like, for example, when I would do, we do Jiu-Jitsu once a week before obviously all this happened, you know, for my son, I would train him a certain way

and I would train my daughter a different way. I would talk to him a little bit differently and just kind of recognizing what they need from each one of us, each one of our parents. And like my wife is a badass. So for that reason, we just connect and we talk about, Hey, what do you think this person needs? What do you think this person needs?

We try to do this. Yeah. And do you guys do that kind of dividing conquer? Like, is she, is your wife like harder on your daughter and you're more soft with your daughter than your heart on your son? Like, how does that, how does that dynamic work? Yeah, I'm probably, I'm probably, yeah, that's a really good question. I think I'm probably the soft on both of them compared to her.

Oh, you're the soft one? Yeah, she's, she's no nonsense, like get it done, but they, but that's like, but then they love her so much, right? Like, like anything she says goes for me, I'm just like on the side over here. But yeah, I'm pretty laid back with most things. So that's interesting to me because I'm like within the business, I'm like the, the asshole or the hard ass, but that I'm such a softy for my son. Do you know what it is?

What is it? That's the same thing. Cause you don't, you come off to me like you have that, like you're trained hard, hard ass business, everything else, but then the kids just melt you. Oh yeah. They melt me. I mean, definitely my, uh, unless we're playing sports, like, business, everything else, but then the kids just melt you. Oh yeah, they melt me. I mean, definitely my, unless we're playing sports, like yeah, I'm getting melted across the board, right?

It's just in sports because Kayden is such a competitor that I need to feed off that. I could see that. I could see me playing sports, being tough on it, but all the other things, I'm like such a softy. That's typically how it is if mom is, because does your wife stay at home and she stay at home or she yeah, that's probably why I mean

I think when you when the parent that does most of the raising maintain is gonna be the one that's the most like Structured and then dad pops in he's like let's have fun. Yeah, I don't feel that way at Justin's house Courtney's home, but I feel like Justin's the hammer more hard. Just is definitely the hammer Well, I think he may be the hammer doesn't mean't mean he's more strict though. Yes, he is. Well, it depends. Yes, he is, bro. I kind of come in after the fact, you know, just to kind of regulate. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I always check myself on that too.

Cause I want to like, I don't always want to be like the bad cop and come in and like, you know, discipline all the time. But it is, you know, you kind of find that dynamic and that's what you work out with your partner. She, she works perfectly with me. And so yeah, it's, it's just interesting. Everybody has their own kind of configuration.

Here's what I think about all the time. It's like, dude, on a regular basis, I'm just asking myself like, hey, how are we doing man? Like, like, how am I doing? How am I doing on these different areas? And if every day you just tell yourself like, Hey, I'm doing the best that we can as a family, like, I don't know what more you could really do. Have you guys created it?

I think that's such a great point you just brought up. And you brought that up earlier too about the, even checking in with like your daughter, like the biggest key to this is because you're right. Like sometimes it'll have nothing to do with you. It's outside forces. The best thing that we can do is just communicate. And so are there things that you and your wife do or that you guys have created over years of like a practice of like to stay?

Because a lot of people don't. A guy like you who's such a high performer, you've got two kids, you got all these gyms and business stuff, you're a busy fucking dude. So I imagine that you guys have had to create some sort of disciplines around like, hey, every Friday we get to this or every night we do. Like, do you guys have practices to make sure that you and her are always on the same page or you guys are checking in? Yeah, I mean, well, you got to think, you know, my wife and I met when we were 14 and we've been together ever since and through that time, communication has been the key. And, and we've gone through some, you know, trauma or whatever you want to call it hardship, whatever, everybody's gone, everybody goes through stuff.

So, but we just connect through it, right? We try and try and realize we're both on the same team, trying to accomplish the same goal. We might have different approaches to it, but we got to come together to say like, like success for her is being the best mom and dad in the world, right? And, and raising really competent, amazing young humans. And if that's the same thing for me, then we just got to make sure we're communicating well, because we're on the same team and we do date nights, right? Once a week at least. Um, that's been something we instilled when Eva got sick the first time around. And, uh, it's been something we do every single week.

And it's been incredibly powerful for us because, um, it's just an opportunity for us just to connect on whatever we have to talk about, you know, I think that's missed in a lot of relationships. I mean, I don't know how many your friends are good about doing that, but I have a lot of friends that have kids and they get lost in the show. They get lost in the raising the kids and I was, we were out at a, I don't remember what we did. We did like a date night with a good couple of ours and they have two little ones and they were saying it was the first night they've been out in five years. I'm like, how the fuck do you have, keep a healthy marriage

and not have gone out with your wife in five years? It's crazy. And it starts to fester, it starts to grow, right? And so I think that if you could do something on a weekly basis, again, some of these stuff sounds fluffy, but it works. Like there's a reason why people recommend this is because it gives you a chime that you could allocate

that you prioritize them, right? And they're prioritizing you and you get a chance to connect on things that are important to you. Yeah. Did this, has this made you reflect on our industry, the fitness industry, because of, you know, how, because body image and issues and eating stuff, I mean, our industry is plagued with it. After going through this or going through, are you looking, do you look at our industry and go, okay, here's, here's what I think what we're doing wrong. And maybe we need to change things. I don't know.

I mean, it's, it's super raw and super new to me. And I'm still trying to figure out like my overall thoughts on everything. I think what we do is powerful. I think what we do changes lives. And I think the fitness space is incredibly important. I actually think the CrossFit space has done a really good job of not preaching like this. Skinny is whatever.

Like they've really tried to bring forth like strong as beauty, especially for women. Like as far as I'm concerned, now this is my, I'm very biased here. No, you're right. They, they, they, they were more successful at getting women to lift weights than any other attempt has ever, ever. So for that reason, right? If what CrossFit, I think did for women is it focused on performance and it focused on aesthetic of strength and conditioning and gymnastics and not just,

Oh, can you be skinny? Yeah. Like when you see a girl who does CrossFit on the street, you know, she does CrossFit. Like at least that's my opinion. I agree. I agree. There's, they're built. know, you can see it. They're, they're, they're, and they're not being judged based on how skinny they are.

They're judged based on, or at least however they judge themselves on this athletic look. So for that, I think Cross has done a good job, but it is, it is something I'm, I'm reflecting on and thinking to myself like, what advice do I have for dads, moms and people? And I'm just in the beginning of this journey, but I know I'm going to learn a lot more in the next six months and a year. And I'm going to continue to talk about it because just like leukemia, I've had countless people reach out to me who want advice on how to handle the same situation. And I've always been there to support them because you need to learn from

other people who've gone through it. I want to be able to be a voice for people who may not have the same type of network or microphone that I do to try and share with them what I've gone through and what I've learned. And but right now it's just so new that I haven't been able to condense it. You know what's trippy about all of this?

Cause I dived deep into this a while ago that anorexia and bulimia were, are both deemed a social contagion. I don't know if you knew that they didn't exist. They didn't exist until maybe Doug, you could look this up. Anorexia is a social contagion. I forgot what happened, but it started spreading and someone publicized like, oh, this is what people are doing.

And then it became a disorder never existed up until this particular point. And they've deemed it as like an example of a social contagion, which is really fucking wild when you think about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I wonder what else is on that list. Like you, I wonder the pop, like for example, I saw some research come out about people that are identify as a different sex. Oh, there's an argument that that's also a social contagion because of its explosion, especially among the youth and especially among girls. I haven't done enough research on this to make a, you know, it's just from what I saw,

it's like, you know, the amount of people that identify as a different sex in, you know, 1985, whatever. Then it's like 2000. Then it's like 2024. So now, is that because it's more socially acceptable? Is that because it's who knows why? It's just that is that's a good example that you're talking about. Yeah, Doug, did you find it? Yes.

What is that show? Would you mind throwing it up to the TV at the top so we can see? Yeah, give me a second. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I remember reading about this and the strange contagious history of bulimia. There it was, it was bulimia, that was a social contagion. And so when did it start?

Yeah, it looks like in the 1970s, this was first. So before the 1970s, that didn't exist. Did not exist as a disorder that doctors were seeing. Now, do you think that's partly because, you know, this is going back to the point you made about our generation compared to your parents and then the generation before that great depression generation, that we didn't even have the luxury to do that, that eating enough food to survive was already at risk.

So diets, diet, social pressures were different too. Well, so you should read, so I don't know what you're seeing in that article, but I know that diets existed well before this. So there were still, there were diets in the 40s and 30s. Yeah, but I wouldn't categorize bulimia or anorexia. No, what I mean is that the awareness around, like I gotta eat a particular way to lose weight

or whatever. So prior to this time, these disorders were very rare, but after 1980, it became widespread in a very short period of time. Yeah, so that's what happened. So it was 1980 and then you see this goudouge explosion of girls who were having these eating disorders. Yeah, and was that because of social structure?

Is that because, believe me, because for example, like no one had ever been exposed to it. So all of a sudden more people around them have heard about it. So then it might have triggered this, that thing in them that, you know, it's so interesting to look at like society and how quick information can travel now.

And it's, you know, especially being in the health and fitness space, it's something that I think we need to discuss. Well, what's important. So, um, we did most of our careers, uh, training just everyday people, right? So we didn't train athletes. We didn't train competitors. It was just every day.

We did. It was a small percent. We did very small. It was mostly just everyday regular people, um, in, you know, big box gym type stuff or private studios. And, uh, you know, 10 years into, and we all talk about this all time on the show, 10 years into what we did, you realize like, this has a lot less to do about what exercises you need to do and what the right diet is. And much more to do about the cycle, the psychology, the behaviors, the

relationship you have with yourself, the relationship you have with food and the relationship you have with activity. And then when you figure that out, you become much more effective with your clients. All of a sudden, people now make this a lifestyle, whereas before it was very much like, do what I say, follow this workout, here's your diet, do this, oh, you don't do it, it's because you're not disciplined type of deal. And so, you know, I think the people that are best, that can best communicate this are people who work as coaches and trainers with just everyday people for years and years and years. It takes a long time to figure out. I remember when I first saw the success of this, I had clients who also worked with therapists, and then I would work with a therapist to work with the client. And then I was like, oh shit,

my approach was totally wrong. And then boom, success with the client. Yeah. Fitness and consistency is the key that I've recognized, right? Like we have this idea of like never zero. So like keeping momentum, going with your movement, whether it's a walk, a jog, anything, whatever.

I mean, but you know, I don't know where I'm at. And this is just maybe it's because I've explored a lot of different things. Like, so I had a mindset coach forever for competing in CrossFit and he would teach me how to understand what's in my control, out of my control, positive self talk, those are really important, valuable skills you can learn while in a hard workout. And I just feel like if we could encourage more people to work out, this is just, I drink the Kool-Aid hard

Like I just feel like the best gift you could give yourself is a hard workout Where you learn to overcome some challenges because it makes real life challenges easier and I just I'm just convinced of that At least for myself now there's so many other layers of that right and it depends on who the person is but I Think that if people just recognize that if they just went out and did something, I think a sedentary lifestyle adds to a lot of these other factors that happen in life. Well, it has many parallels to like playing sports, right?

And we talked about this the other day about like, just the value of kids playing sports, like what they learn with overcoming adversity, getting picked last, like, you know, trying your hardest and failing, like there's so much and that the gym The gym applies that like if you train long enough you're gonna fail you're gonna hit plateaus You're gonna have setbacks. You're probably gonna get injured. You're probably not gonna be the strongest like you do that You can't compare yourself to other people. Yeah, you know inevitably meet somebody that's better and more disciplined than you

Yeah, you know and so you have to kind of remove yourself from that identity on some level. Yeah, there's so many lessons that are parallel to anything you're going to experience. So that's the argument I would make though, is that I don't necessarily say that everybody has to train, right? I think that you could find that per-same, similar pursuit in sports. But I think if you don't play sports, then you're really missing out if you don't find the gym at some point in your life, because where else are you going to get that, right? That those lessons. Well, how many adults play tradition? How many adults play sports?

Excluding like Jiu-Jitsu, let's just say Jiu-Jitsu is not even a small, which was only exploded in the last like eight years, right? But that's Joe like, before Joe Rogan, nobody was doing it. But like, you know, here's a really interesting concept. One of my friends said this to me and I was like, I was like, mindblown. It was Kelly started. He goes, you know, the sign of a good, healthy relationship to sport or something along that line where you don't burn the kid out, but you like, you, you push enough, but don't burn them out is when they're done playing sports,

whenever that is, like high school, college, whatever level, they still would go play that sport. Yeah. And I thought about that for a while and I was like, damn, I was like, that's powerful, right? Like, cause imagine the people that played like, Oh, I played college, uh, name the sport, right? But they never like go play a pickup basketball. They're done.

They're done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the people who, Hey, you can apply that to like, how many people have you met that went to six or eight years of college and then they fucking stop learning. They stop reading. Yeah. So they go bust their ass to get the school

done just to get the degree, but then they've resented it the whole time versus enjoying that process and going with it. Because we don't know how to care for ourselves, man. That's why, because workouts are not, you know, it's not a punishing. Yeah. It's not a self care. It's not for self care. That's why, because workouts are not, you know, it's not a punishing, it's not a self care. It's not for self care. It's for to look a particular way. That's why I'm doing this. I want to look this particular way.

And if I look that way, I'll be happy. And if I'm not, then I'm not going to be happy. It's not, people don't know how to care for themselves. They really don't. And care is not easy. Well, they, which is another way to say that is they're entering into working out with already the wrong mindset. Yeah, for most people, like for me, I work out.

I really, maybe it's because I have a physique that I'm comfortable with, but like I exercise to, so that I could do those things I talk about like the protective vibe. Like that's important to me. Like, I never want my kids ask me, do you see me? I can't physically do it. Like if I can't see it. Yeah, but you went through the process too. Oh, I love it. It's the means to the end. Yeah, and that's also you've probably it. Like if I can't see, you would do the process too. It's, oh, I love means to the end.

Yeah. And that's also you've probably caught, like, I don't know about you, but I know that's not how I started here. I started here insecure. That's right. I started here as the skinny kid. Yeah. I got teased for being skinny and I wanted the attention of girls.

And so like very wrong place to start. And it took years of training to kind of come full circle with, with that. So I imagine you're the same way. Yeah. I mean, I started off, I was bigger and then I got in a Muay Thai and it led into a bunch of cool stuff and then CrossFit, obviously. But, you know, I think, and now my journey with Jiu Jitsu has been like incredible. I love, I absolutely love Jiu Jitsu.

I think it has a lot of parallels to real life. Some days you're doing great. Some days you're getting choked out and, and you got to learn how to control yourself and, and, and get back on the mats, you know? Stay calm. Some days you're doing great. Some days you're getting choked out. And you gotta learn how to control yourself and get back on the mats, you know? Stay calm. Speaking of Jiu Jitsu, I found this as a struggle. So I did Jiu Jitsu for a long time.

I heard you gotta get you back on the mats. Yeah, no, you train with my brother-in-law. He was telling me all about you and you guys work out together sometimes, but I haven't done it for years. But I do remember when I did it, I had to learn how to not use my physical strength in order to allow myself to learn the technique.

Right. Did you have, because you've been doing this for, or purple, brown, brown belt? Brown. Okay, so you're very advanced now. Did you get, go through that period where you're like, oh, I gotta stop muscling through all this stuff just cause I, you know, I'm stronger than everybody.

You know what I think I love about, so obviously, you know, CrossFit, what I fell in love with was like the high intensity workouts, but also the complexity. I enjoyed learning new skills, like walking on my hands, hands, hand pushups, whatever, like muscle ups. And then you get to a certain point when you're training it for so long that like getting better at your muscle up, even 2% is like very, very difficult when you get to a certain level.

And so it wasn't unlocking that potential in me. Like I was getting the fitness, but I wasn't like learning something new to your point. Like I finished school, I wanted to continue to learn. And so I, in Jiu Jitsu, what I find the most coolest thing is that it's like a game of chess and you learn something new every single day. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it for.

And the beginning, I really wanted to muscle everything. And I probably was a really poor training partner, if I'm being honest, but it took me. I can only imagine. You're that white belt that probably hurt everybody. That's right. That just spads out and yeah. I was, I was probably the guy who was a terrible training partner. And now my goal, no matter who I'm rolling with, I want to be a good training partner.

So if I roll with someone who's like legit, well, then I need to give him that same push. Otherwise he's not going to get much of it. If I'm rolling with a brand new white belt, then I need to regulate my, my intensity and control that. But in the beginning, it's very hard, especially for a guy, especially for a bigger guy, because as soon as someone puts their hands on you, you're not very, you're not very used to it.

Like it's very, you want to default to like using all your stuff. Well, yeah, because it's very foreign. Like how often when's the last time you get in a physical space of like another dude, right? And so for that reason, I'm very grateful for my jiu-jitsu journey. It's been a great way to unlock your mind too.

Like I've been thinking about this a lot lately, like having like three things. So like you have your work, you have your family, and for a lot of people, they have like a third thing, but I find that if you could find a third thing that really allows you to be present and focused like Jiu Jitsu or like one of my buddies, uh, competitive shooter, like, like a, or golf, for example, we really got to hone in, right? You really got to be focused.

I feel like you could show up in those other areas even better. So, uh, so do you guy like you, or do you have like, how do you do, do you do triangle jokes with your big ass legs? Are you able to do, or, or do you, okay. You still able to change the angle. I don't, I got to change the angle. I don't, I don't do triangles as much. Right. I play, you know, cause every body type people don't know this, that they don't do jiu-jitsu. You can use your game. You can change it to your body type.

Long, lanky, short stocky. For sure. Yeah. If you're long and lanky, you're going to be better off doing some triangles. You'll be able to wrap it up quicker. Like for me, I'm going to be better on side control and whatever. You're probably a Camero machine, I would imagine. Camero machine. Yes, that's a good one for me. Or like some sit-up sweeps from the bottom

and different types of stuff. But Jiu-Jitsu is cool because it's very humbling. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it for, it doesn't matter how good you are, you can always get caught. When was the first time you went in there, like strong, you know, CrossFit games, champion, you know, Jason Khalifa, and then just a little skinny, flexible dude, just put your out.

I mean, do you remember the first time that happened? I don't remember the specific time it happened, but it happened countless times, right? Like, I just remember like, you know, just being like, damn dude, like, because you think you're a super fit. And this is really what got me inspired. So I got inspired to do Jiu Jitsu two reasons.

One is I retired from the sport of CrossFit when Ava got sick. So I needed an outlet. That was one. The other was I'd always walked through airports when I was traveling for CrossFit or whatever I was doing and people be like, oh dude, like, I don't want to mess with you. Like they would always say that to me. I'd always think to myself, like I have a background in Muay Thai, but I was thinking to myself like, dude, I don't, I haven't developed many fight skills. Like I,

I'm focused on fitness, not necessarily the fighting. Yeah. Yeah. And it always would like cause me like a moment of like, should I tell him like, maybe I wouldn't be that good. Let him assume. And so then, then that's when I really wanted to get into jitsu is to develop this self defense and art that I think I could do for the rest of my life. Whereas Muay Thai was very like it was very aggressive. So I don't think I could have done it for very long. Yeah. So, so, so what's your game inside mount?

Yeah. Attacks. Okay. Yeah. Like, well, if I'm, if I'm rolling like if I really want to like win. If you want to win. Yeah. I'm going to get in like half guard, try and pass'm, if I'm rolling like, if I really want to like win. If you want to win. Yeah. I'm going to get in like half guard, try and pass half guard, get to side control,

try and hold them down there. And then I'll probably say in side control, maybe go north south and do something with their arms. Oh yeah. That's the big guy moves. That's the strong guys. Yeah. But if I'm playing bottom as a lately, especially in a G, like I've been getting a lot more dynamic in a G, it's been a lot of fun.

Cause like you have a G, no G. It's a very cool sport. And then recently I also got into the tactical games, which I was supposed to compete in this upcoming weekend. I gotta talk to you about that. Yeah. I was supposed to compete this upcoming weekend, but I pulled out of that one because of, basically I told the guy who runs the event,

cause he's done a lot for me. I was like, look man, I can see my daughter on the weekends and there's no way. I'm going to be shooting guns and doing fitness in Arizona instead of like being here to see her life. You know, it's not happening. It's not happening. Right.

Like, uh, you guys ever heard that thought? Like, will it matter in five seconds, five minutes or five years? You guys ever heard of that? No, I haven't. That's actually a cool way to look through that lens through things. So like, let's just say like you bump me or whatever, right? Is that going to matter in five seconds, maybe five minutes? Probably not five years.

I won't even remember that you bumped me as an example. But that's the way people normally look at things in life, right? Will it matter? And you're like, oh, just brush it off, whatever. But what if it's the flip side? Like what if it's like, will it matter in five years that you didn't go to your grandma's funeral? Or that you didn't show up to a wedding

because you were too busy, right? That's the best way I've been looking at some things, right? Like, will it matter that I didn't compete in the tactical games five years from now? No, cause I'm gonna find another date to do it. Will it matter that I wasn't able to show up every single weekend I could this year? Yeah, it's gonna matter to me, right?

So that's something that I've been doing. That's a really cool end. I've never heard anybody say that before. Five seconds, matter to me. Right. So that's something that's a really cool in. So it's a real, I've never heard anybody say that before. Five seconds, five minutes, five years. So what are the tackle? So I'm assuming it has some kind of, some kind of fitness component. And then you got your target.

What we're going to do with Scott. Oh yeah. What we're going to do with Scott. Hey, it's shooting guns and. Yeah. Like that sounds cool to me. It's, uh, it's, uh, so one of the reasons why I have particularly fallen, I don't know, falling in love, that's a very,

that's intense. Too strong. One of the reasons why, yeah, way too strong. I really like it. Yeah. One of the reasons why I have enjoyed it is that it's unlocking another part of like, so if you look at like 10 general physical skills,

like power, strength, endurance, stamina, flexibility, whatever, one of those is accuracy, right? The guys that created the Dynamynamax med ball created like these 10 general physical schools. And accuracy is one of them, but in CrossFit and even in Jiu Jitsu, you never test accuracy much like maybe that's a fundamental skill, human skill, by the way, that you don't really test, right? And so when I started getting introduced this idea of shooting. It was really eye-opening for me, especially under stress. So, you know, you do 50 burpees,

trying to get a shoot. So you're all exhausted and then you get a shoot. Yeah, I feel exhausted. And what I enjoyed about it is that it really required me to like, Control. Pwn in, control. And work fine motor patterns while being tired.

And so for that, it's been a very cool journey. I mean, that's one of the things I think that is so cool about the ice bath. I think everybody that talks about it, promotes it, promotes all the other things, but the ability to be in a stressful environment like that, like the, I'll never, we did this like, I don't know, God, how many years ago?

It was eight years ago. Justin was the only one that had gone through the Wim Hof train. This was before ice baths became super popular, right? So this was a long time ago. And we all did this competition and Justin was in there drinking a beer and like all comfortable for like whatever, 10 minutes. And Sal and I were like trying to muscle our way.

And it was like, Lexen. I mean, and I tried to just, and I thought, because I have like crazy discipline like that, where I'll take myself to the brink. And I just, I broke it like a minute and a half. But that was because I tried to muscle through it. I didn't know how to calm myself down in this really, and once you learn how to do that,

you also unlock this potential to sit in there for as long as you really want to sit in there. That's the best part of ice bath, I think that people just don't talk about that. For sure. That ability like translates into so many aspects of your life to be under duress and stress like that in an environment and to be able to calm yourself down is a very powerful thing to do.

It's such better decisions in that state. For sure. Like it's so funny because like people talk about the ice bath and like cold plunges have gotten super popular in the last couple years. Friendly. Jiu-jitsu, boom. Yes. Cold plunge, boom. Yeah.

I mean, but a lot of this stuff has been around for forever. Many, many years. Yeah. Um, I put up this thing the other day I was talking about it. This is a while ago. I was like, look, you can say what you want about the cold plunge You could talk to me you could negate the science of anti-inflammatory Brown fat you I don't really care what you talk about proteins. Yeah, the bottom line is it's something hard That I don't want to do and by doing it. I'm gonna get better because of it

That's it. I went in the cold plunge this morning. I absolutely hate the cold. Like I hate it. You never learned to like it. Ever. Never gets easy. I hate it, but, but, but it, but it makes me feel like I'm accomplished when I get out.

So I don't care what the science says. Doesn't matter to me. Should I do it before workout after workout? It doesn't matter. Like, is it not? That's exactly how we get asked about it all the time because there's so many people going viral now of trying to debate the science. Wait six hours, you know, whatever.

It's like, dude, you guys are way overthinking this shit. You're way overthinking this shit. The challenge is just being able to do it and that's where the value is. The value is, can you get your ass in that freezing cold water when you don't want to do it and still do it anyways and then have the discipline and control to regulate your breathing and calm down to where you can sit in there for four or five minutes.

Like that is it. Who gives a shit about anything else? For sure. That's cause everybody wants to, we want to attach everything to fat loss or muscle gain. That's why. What are the fat loss of muscle gain effects? Like, you know, the, you know, back to your point, um, I think.

I wonder what that's going to do for the future of our youth with what you just said. Like, because what gets clicks and what gets attention is what you just said. Fat loss, muscle gain. And it's a fine line, right? Because who are we to say that your goals of fat loss or muscle gain are not appropriate? Like if those are your goals and that's important to you, it's not that it's not appropriate.

It's that it's not complete. So fasting, here's a better easier example, fasting. Can you lose body fat through fasting? Well, yeah, you can, but that's not the value of fasting. The value of, it's existed for thousands of years. It's a, it's a detach, it's a way to detach from an earthly desire or need. It's a spiritual practice. When you, it's a way to detach from an earthly desire or need. It's a spiritual practice. When you fast, you're denying yourself a foot.

And of course this is within the context of a healthy individual. For sure. When you're fasting, you're denying yourself this thing. And so you, you, you develop yourself differently. That's the value. The fact that you lose weight on me, you lose weight a million different ways. That's not the value, but that's how they sell it. Right.

Cold plunge. What's the value? Oh, cytokine production, anti-inflammatory, whatever. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no cytokine production, anti-inflammatory, whatever. Brown fat, all that shit. The value is it's cold and it's freaking hard. Right. And you're choosing to do something really hard. That's the value of it, right? So that's the thing. It's not a complete picture. Exercise, build muscle, burn body fat. Yes, two things that it does. But what about all these other things that it does? Part of that too is that, and you said this earlier, that, to your point, like, who am I to say that, you know, your goal to lose 20 pounds is not right or not fair.

Well, the problem is so many people set out with that goal, thinking that the end results going to make them happy. Oh yeah. That's where the whole another layer, exactly. Like nothing wrong. We wanted to get shredded for summer. Have fun. And the fact that we have the, the knowledge and the science to apply

diet, nutrition and exercise and to build, that's cool. But if you think that it's going to make you a happy person because you did that, you're fucked. And it is the wrong goal. That's a really, uh, I mean, that's like a whole another like next step. And one of the things that I've noticed. So we are on week 23 now, week 23 in a row that I've hosted. Uh, we add a minimum one free train hard men's club workout a week.

The last 23 weeks. What is this exactly? You brought this up a couple of times. What is this? Just be going. Who's going to. No, no, no, it's a Julio, but I don't know if he goes to this or not. He's got the, your, um, your brother-in-law does.

Yeah. Yeah. He's came, he just came with me. We were in a parking lot on Saturday, 26th. Oh, right, he did. I did see pictures of this. All right, so what is it? So the reason why I'm bringing this up

is because of what you just said. It is my role, you know, one of my goals is to support my local community in being as fit and as capable as possible. And I feel like I wasn't doing the best job of that. Yes, I own gyms. Is that helping? Sure.

Do we put out online content? Sure. But what else can I do within my community to help men in particular that I can relate to? Now, I'm not saying this is not, dude, women should be training hard and doing it too. But I can relate to men and what they're going through. And so I wanted to start with them.

And so I just put out like, hey, we're just gonna do a men's club workout. Let's get five guys started in my garage. Then I got seven, then I got 10, then I got 20. Then all of a sudden people wanted to do it that I didn't know and I didn't want them to come to my house. So, so. Which is totally fair.

And so now we have an email list. We have a text thread. I send out a message on Thursday. It's always been free. There's never been any money transacted. There's never been any ask of anybody at all, except for to come and put in your best effort. That's it.

And, um, you know, now we have probably 50, 60 guys every week, um, just in parking lots, pushing up hills, doing whatever they're doing. Like we, we do something different every week. Um, and you organize the workouts and what's going to happen. Yeah. So essentially when people show up, it's like, it's like this. We have, you know, I bring out a clock, I bring out, I have an AED, I bring out a speaker and we do it like in the parking lot of a library or the parking lot of this or inside

of gymnasium or up a hill. We've done hill sprints countless times. And I just say, guys, like my goal here is just to, is just to do something hard together. I feel like we can connect. Let's, let's put out our best effort. If you do, we always do EMOMs or AMRAPs. So no one ever knows, like there's never a four time workout. So no one knows if you did five reps or 50 reps,

as long as we're doing it together. And we have gear, we have sandbags we bring out. I've brought sleds, we do plates, and I just transported my truck and we just do hard stuff together. And then what's really been the coolest part, which is why I wanted to bring this up, is that after we're done, every single week, it started off with like two people,

just like you're having a cup of coffee, like low key, right? And then it's three, and then it's four. Now, every time after we have about 15 guys that just go to a local coffee shop and just shoot the shit and talk about what's happening in their lives. And you got police officers with tech gazillionaires with whatever and they don't know each other from Adam, right? They're just guys going through stuff and they're connecting through the shared experience

of doing something hard. And it's that next layer of like the weight loss, right? It's having somebody to talk to about even some of the conversations we're having today. Good deal, man. That's awesome. That's so cool. That's awesome. You guys got to come to one.

I don't work out like that. Chop some trees down. Dude, we got this one guy. We got one guy. He's a buddy of mine. It's so funny. He only works out once a week with me. That's it.

And he throws up like every other time. Yeah. It's like, come on, man. Oh, you got me convinced now. I want to come out and see you. He lost me at AED. He's like, you know what, we bring some stuff. He just slid that in there too.

I got the AED there. I heard that. He's like, I could have worked out for me, dog. Yeah. I'm just trying to be safe. He was all low key under that. I heard that. I heard that. I heard that. I heard that. I'm gonna work out for me dog. I'm just trying to be, you gotta be safe. He was all low key under that. He said that, just slid in there.

AED's there too. Like, oh, dude, fuck you gotta breathe AED. Run on over there. Good deal, Jay. But you guys should come out, especially with you guys and the kids, right? Well, I really want to do the dinner, dude. I really want to support that.

I think one of the years, I don't know where we were at, but I would love to actually help and support that cause. We didn't get to jump on board with you on that last year. I'd like to, I like to use our platform to support that. Yeah. March second. So March second, we have an Arnold. It's, it's, yeah, we're, we're out of town.

It's the week in the Arnold, but we have some great live auction items and, you know, we can donate something that you auction. Yeah. Donate to auction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's the best way to support you?

Yeah. Um, I mean the neat. So, okay, well, let's talk. So Ava's kitchen is an annual fundraiser. So we can give some context. This is your seven. It's with chef Michael Mina and we invite like, we get like four or five like world's best chefs.

Like right now, I think this year we're having a top chef winner. Like we've had, we've had all, we've had a lot of really great chefs because of Michael Mina and these other chefs network, not just because of us. And every dollar that's raised goes in an organization called Nigu,

which is a never, ever give up organization. And the goal there is to put smiles on kids faces. So they do joy jars, they do all kinds of stuff. It's not for the cure, it's for the care is the theory there. So the best way to support would just be to go to avaskitchen.org and if you want to, if people want to just leave a donation, they can, but the event's coming up like in two weeks.

Okay. Well, then that's what I'd like to do. I'd like for us to, from now until then, we'll make that like our shout out and we'll drive to that. I'd love to impact that as much as we can. Yeah. I mean, that'd be great.

You guys, we'll be great to have you guys there next year. It's just a really cool event, you know, great food, great people trying to raise money for a good cause. And, um, you know, Ava's not going to be there this year. It's going to be pretty heavy, but that's part of the journey, man. Like that, that just gives you even more reason why we gotta do this kind of stuff. Because I do think part of this had to do with some of that and other kids are going through the same type of stuff.

So if we have the financial means, we'll be able to help them like, let's go. You know, something too that I think is important is just so, I mean, you seem to have pretty good empathy, but do you even give you more? Like it's so cool. You said something earlier that I actually, I'm trying to get better at.

Katrina and I, we have a, I wouldn't say we're, every night have we been consistent with having a dinner together. And it's crazy how much that's become the norm in a lot of households, including my own. And I think the fact that you guys have dinner every night, you saw something that you may not have even seen with a lot of these households

that families don't have dinners together. Dude. So imagine, you know, as bad as it is right now and as rough as shitty time you're going through, imagine if you were like probably 80% of the families out there that don't have dinners sitting together. Well, so one family I connected to had an older girl, she was 16. This is actually terrifying. And this individual, long story short,

she couldn't stand up anymore. That's how fatigued she was. And if you had asked me this a year ago, I would have been like, bro, how do the parents not notice that this girl can't stand up? Never again, and something that, it's so funny, because the older I get,

I always tell myself, don't pass judgment, you don't understand, have empathy. The older I get, the more tell myself, don't pass judgment. You don't understand like have empathy. Like the older I get, the more I realize I don't know as much as I think I know, right? And there's always, but it's easy to pass judgment. You say, how could this family not know like that she had an eating disorder when she like passes out in the kitchen? But imagine like paint this picture.

You have a 16 year old girl that has her own driver's license. She gets them in the morning, she grabs an apple and a cup of coffee year old girl that has her own driver's license. She gets up in the morning, she grabs an apple and a cup of coffee. You're like, okay, that's fine. I think she's gonna be eating at school. She'll have lunch at school. Right, right.

You don't know that. But then she goes to school. Maybe she doesn't eat anything. And then all of a sudden she has school sports. So then you assume she eats before sports. Then she comes home and maybe has this little snack with you. And then she goes to bed, but you already assumed she had a meal before sports and a meal at lunch. And so it's not as simple as it seems, right? Oh, no.

And then at an earlier layer, maybe you're a family who's busy and meal time at different times, and it's kind of thin for yourself at your house, and kids go to their room and go eat or in front of the TV. And that's a lot of teenagers. They spend time in the room a lot or the war baggy clothes. You can't necessarily tell. Yeah. And I think the social media thing is something that I think it's just. Bro, I was just going to ask you, are you, how are you with that with your kids with social media? So my daughter doesn't have, I mean, you know, look, she had Pinterest and she has,

I do not want to mistake, I am not naive enough to think that she has not had access to these things. Right, right. But on her phone, we had deleted, she had TikTok for a little bit, like this is like a year ago, we deleted it because we thought something was coming up. Right. And she had no other social platforms. But I don't know if that's necessarily the good solution either, because now, I don't know if that's necessarily the good solution either because now instead of teaching moderation and understanding, I'm just saying no.

And I don't know if that's good because this is the world we live in and the world we live in has these things in it and we need to shepherd the kids through learning how to deal with them. So I don't know if the writing answer is just like, no, you can't have it on your phone. But I do think that social media, especially for young girls, is something that we need to, we need to really pay attention to. You're, you're touching on something though, that I wrestle with a lot right now. Um, they have data by the way on this now, finally, they didn't have data before. But I, I mean, what he's saying that I think is so important too, because

it's really easy to be one extreme or the other as a parent, like either you don't give a shit and just let your kids do whatever, or you have the attitude of like, no, can't have it. And then they go behind your back and they do ghost profiles and they do all this shit that you have no idea about and they do it anyway. So it's like, what is the right balance? I, so my son's only four. And so obviously I don't have social media as an issue, but I do have the iPad and even little games.

Great example. And I wrestled with that. So originally the big joke when, before he was born, I used to say my son's not gonna see a television for like 10 years. Like I had this. And you see parents like on an airplane or something with an iPad, you're like, that's not gonna be me.

I'm never gonna do that. Go try to fly with them. So I said never. And then now I've allowed in there. Now what's great about it is I was aware enough to know of the dangers of it, the addictive things, his behaviors when he's with it or not with it. And so I've chosen more of like moderation and learning to integrate it and it not be the end all be all. And that we very much so go through times where a week will go by and he won't ever have access to it and we'll be the end all be all and that we very much so go through times where

a week will go by and he won't ever have access to it and we'll be doing X things. Now, I've learned as a parent, a lot of it is on my responsibility to just because what I've he's for so yeah, he wants to play on his iPad or play games. But if daddy engages and goes, let's go wrestle outside or let's go build your Legos, like it's not hard to convince him to do that. And so a lot of that responsibility versus saying all no or all yes, is actually just being aware as a dad or a parent and going, man, I know it's really easy to default and just allow them to entertain themselves on it. But I don't want that.

And so the best way to control that in my opinion is to, is to control it by you doing things with them Which it sounds like for sure I mean the the technology component is I think something that we as parents need to really pay attention to For both sexes meaning for my son if he just plays video games all day Which like I said, he never had a video game console until three days ago And now he's been playing Madden and I've been we and we're giving him a lot more slack than we normally would. But I think these young boys, they go to school,

they're sitting down all day, which sucks. Then they come home and they're playing video games, which is just sedutary. And they have this pent up, like I just feel like young boys, they have this energy that needs to get out. And if it's not brought out through sports and through activities, I think it comes out in a lot of negative ways.

And I think video games are adding to that. And not to mention all the violent ones and all kinds of stuff, but with girls, I don't necessarily think it's the video games that are big problem. It's the social media. Did you, did you see the clip that is going around? I've heard Jordan Peterson say it many times. I don't know how much of his content you've consumed or not, but Jordan Peterson talks about what video why video games are so addicted to young boys

Because it emulates this this dragon or thing that you have to conquer and levels and so that and why they like it so much Is because we're we are wired as young men to do that in real life And so it's giving them this false sense of they're doing it. It's a digital challenge and conquest and you beat it, but it's all digital. It's not real. Yeah. And it's, and you're robbing them of potentially doing that in real life by allowing them to just do that. Yeah.

The two big dangers for the boys is video games and pornography because they both, they both rob young men of our natural drives. One of them is to get women to like you, which is an important thing. Like that's not, that's not, not important. It's very important to learn how to get women to want to be with you. That's a very, that's why men were a lot of women

like a guy that's respected. It's because, well, he's doing something right, right? Right. So there's that, that take that away with pornography. And then video games is me going out and conquering or conquest or challenge and overcoming. But now it's on a video game. I'm not building anything. I'm just building this thing on Minecraft or whatever. I'm not really out there doing something. So we're just, we're,

we're robbing them of. And the creators have really hacked into this. Yeah. Of course. They understand the psychology of this and they've learned to, to feed that open loop. Have you read the book, Boys Adrift? So Boys Adrift speaks on this particular thing and it was, it was written in 2015, so it's still a little bit outdated, but I just finished it a little bit ago and it's very fascinating. They talk about, it was, it was done by basically a traditional doctor, like a, a, a pediatrician and he talks about,

he saw these signs of ADD, ADHD and they started like trying to get deeper, deeper. Anyways, he talks about these several saw these signs of ADD, ADHD, and they started like trying to get deeper, deeper. Anyways, he talks about these several factors. One being video games, the other one being pornography. And he said that on average, if you took like a 16 year old's phone out of like 100 kids or something like that, like 70% of them had more than a thousand pornography photos on there. So I don't want to butcher the quotes, but you could pull it up. I'm sure it's called Boys The Dr, but it's it's a very um It's a it was very alarming

You know book and then but for the girls I think it's social media dude And then also like the clicks right because you now you you it's very clickish And so you know if you're in school and so don't be mean hit every time they get a like or comment And then the type of stuff you get likes and comments, the risk, the more risque or the crazier type of stuff that you post, the more attention that you get. So it's this feedback loop that they get. Oh, I've seen this book actually. Yeah.

Boys adrift. And the one I'm thinking of is the blue one. I don't know if the red one is different or not, but, um, yeah, that one right there. That's what I read. Yeah. So they're the five factors and he goes in a bunch of different things, but you know, to your point, I think, I think it's just something that we need to be aware of like with technology, technology is beautiful.

I mean, we're using technology right now and it's incredible, but it also comes with some downsides, especially the loss of like real connection with people. Yeah. That's why I think, I think your question that you were asking yourself and the one that I find myself asking myself a lot is that I don't think the answer is to completely, you know, hide it from them or tell them no, it's to learn to teach moderation, you know what I'm saying? And and that's even though my son's only four, we try and have these kind of higher level conversations with them about the iPad about using it and just having the exposure. Yeah. That's it. I say delay the exposure,

introduce it in very small increments. How old are your kids? I have 11 and 13 year old. Oh yeah. So you're well, I'm like just getting through. Yeah. You're playing all the sports. I'm all in the weeds with it. Yeah. Are you playing all the sports right now? Yeah. Well, the so my kids are actually in gymnastics and so they're really yeah, we're starting out gymnastics and starting to move into team sports It's two boys. Oh, bro. Those guys are gonna be little monsters. There we are

Flipping and they like gymnastics. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they're really good. They're really getting into it so but yeah The of course all their friends are doing like conventional sports And so it's kind of a little bit hard in that sense that like, you know, they're not having the same conversations with their group of friends. And, and you can't really go to be a spectator even at the gymnastic events. It's like kind of a difficult aspect to it. But like just the, in terms of just seeing their fundamental strength,

their athleticism, like it's just insane. Is that what it is? Uh, eighth grade, well, so it's almost in high school. Yeah. So eighth grade. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's, you know, it's interesting about that. I raced BMX bikes growing up. And when I got to high school, I switched to football, but BMX was always that same way for me where I was, I was good at it. I would be on like a circuit or whatever, but I never had anything to connect with other people at school about because I was doing something that they had no. So unique.

It's so unique, right? It's, it's, they, we couldn't have a conversation about it. Yeah. But that's a great foundation, man. They're going to be able to take that gymnastics. Oh yeah. Gymnastics is the best. Yeah, dude.

For all pursuits. That's why I know. And they're really good. So watching them already, like do the stuff. I'm like, oh, brother, they're going to be so good. You know, they have data now on, on smartphones, which we didn't have before, but the data now shows you want to wait until high school to give your kid a smartphone, at least until high school.

So don't even let them have one. So here's an interesting, so I, my son's 10. We got him a, where he's nine, he turns 10 in a month. We got him an eye watch. He doesn't wear it. I wish he did because I want to be able to track him. Like if, like wherever he's, and I want him to be able to, uh, call on there. If he was like at a friend's house or something, I needed something, but he has no, there's no like, um, there's no apps or anything on it.

It's just like able to call techs. And like, so if he's at a friend's house, he could say like, Hey, I'm ready to like, so if he's at a friend's house, he could say like, Hey, I'm ready to go home. Or if he's at baseball and I mean, we're always there with them. But like, so that was when we tried at 10 or nine, maybe it was too early. I don't know. And then my daughter, it's like when she's out places, it gets, it's, it's tough because it's all the friends start to have it. Oh, I know. Like, you know how it goes. Like, Oh, I know. Cause then they feel like they feel like extra ostracized because they don't have it. Oh, I know. Like, you know how it goes. Like, I know. I know. Because then they feel like they feel like extra. Oster size because they don't have it.

Like, listen, here's the deal. I had to come full circle with this because I was like that too. And then I realized something. If you live the way you're supposed to live in this world, you're going to be sick, fat, unhealthy, depressed and anxious. So yes, they're going gonna be ostracized. That's the point. The stack in the odds against them.

The point is that they don't live in this world. That's the point. I mean, I think that's... And that's the shitty thing, it's shitty, but it's true. The key for us dads is to be able to convince them. It's not just because they don't want to be like everybody else. So that brings up another really interesting topic that I have like the home school idea.

The like, it's a very interesting, like, I don't know, So that brings up another really interesting topic that I have like the home school idea. It's a very interesting, I don't know, I was talking to this guy, Ben Aldermey, he's a close friend of mine. And this idea of like the new modern school, I don't know if you guys have heard of like acting academies and this additional next layer of you guys looked at. So you have like your traditional public school system, right? Then you have like, let's just say a private school system. Now there's this, essentially, and I was called out on this, I said that, oh, you're doing the non-conventional way. I told this guy, he was the homeschool. He's like, well, actually, let me correct you on that.

This is the most conventional way. Like this is the most old school way of teaching is homeschool. Before the Rockefeller shot. Traditional schooling came around. I was like, oh, I was like, all right. That's, is it unschooling? Is that like the same thing where they like it's more led,

like get child led by the things they're interested in. And well, yeah. So you have the homeschooling, the private, the public. And then there was this model from Matt Boudreau. Do you guys know who that is? So Matt Boudreau and it's actually Tim Kennedy has one. They're called Acton Academies.

I looked into Tim Kennedy's and unfortunately it's in Austin. Yeah. Well, he has one in Cedar Park, but Acton, Cedar Park, Texas. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but essentially what it is, there is no grades. Um, there is some structure, right? There's like, uh, teachers, but it's not so like grade based.

It's not like you might have a fifth grader with a. There's some charter schools like that. It's, it's like teachers, but it's not so like grade based. It's not like you might have a fifth grader with some charter schools like that. It's like that. It's a whole different way. You're going to know something or you don't. That's how you go through this. Yeah. And it's interesting. You're not trying to put these kids like in specific box. Are you familiar with unschooling? Okay. So Ben Greenfield, one of my friends, he unschools his kids, which is this. So what he does is it's two boys, right? Yeah.

It's led by their interests and he teaches mathematics, history, science, through real practical things. So they want to learn science. We're, we're cooking a recipe today. And then they, they're into cooking. Yeah. Cause they like cooking because they, they enjoy cooking. So he teaches the science.

Yeah. Temperature, boiling, so he teaches the science through chemistry. He want, they want to learn math. They get it. They hire a construction worker come to the house and they build a fort and they do math through building the fort. And so he uses real life practical things to teach all these and he shoot, lets them choose.

So if they're, his boys are into music, so he teaches all kinds of things through music. So yeah, he uses the things that they're his boys are into music, so he teaches all kinds of things through music. So yeah, he uses the things that they're interested in and then he'll outsource if he needs to or he will teach himself He'll teach them the skills through that. It's really a brilliant I mean if I if I was it like a stay-at-home dad, and I would love to the question with all this stuff is for the parents How how how far are you willing to go Cause it's all hard. It's all hard. So it's like way easier to follow the convention. Like why I say convention, I mean the standard, right?

So like, oh, send them off to school. Now we got some time. I'm going to go to work or whatever. Oh, we're going to do homeschooling. That's even more work. Oh, we're going to take away electronics. That's even more work for me. Oh, no, social media, even more work.

So the realistic question is like, okay, what are we willing to do? Because it's going to make, it's going to be harder. It's going to be harder for like, okay, what are we willing to do? Because it's going to make, it's going to be harder. It's going to be harder for us. And so what are we willing to do? And then that's where you find your hard lines. And do you choose your hard, right? Well, it's, it's a friend of mine that's going through a similar journey. She's like, what she said to me, I thought really resonated. She's like, you know, I'm so good at my business, whatever. And then all of a sudden I chose to homeschool of my kids and I suck at this. Yeah. And it's like, oh man. Yeah. Like, but you know, just using a video game example, just real quick on this one, like

getting Kaden a PS5 was the last thing I thought I would be doing a year ago. But there is some pros that I, I used to say, Hey, if you go to a friend's house, if you go to a grandma's house, you could do it, whatever, anywhere else but our house, because at home, I don't want you to use that as a crutch. I want to be able to go play outside, go juggling and trembling. But then the thing is, one of the things I didn't realize, like, he wouldn't necessarily have friends come over as much because they would be like... They want to play video games. Well, what they want to do is, like, as friends house, and this is, I'm actually okay with, it's like,

they would go out, they'd play baseball, they'd go play sports until it got super dark. And until it got super dark and then play video games. That's how I grew up and they would do it together Yeah, and it's just it's just one of those things were like as a parent like just like looking at through different lenses and perspectives like that Is cool to have all the friends come over get exhausted and then come in and play Madden together But what isn't cool is like being addicted to it and playing up, you know Yeah, or you buy yourself and you're playing with your friend that's way over there and yeah, so he's old enough and you laid a good foundation that you're going to be okay. Like, so I, what I did with my son was I bought the original Nintendo.

Ooh. So it's like a Nintendo Wii back. Bro. So I bought the original NES system and it's at that point, yes. And you know, it's so cute. I got videos of my son. He, I've taught him how to do that, right? So he thinks that we have to do that every time before we play the game.

But what I've noticed, and this is how crazy this is how far the science or psychology has come in gaming today. His little iPad apps, like Angry Birds or any game is far more addictive than the original Nintendo. At that point, we were just figuring out how to put graphics on the TV and make the game work. We weren't, we weren't unpacking the psychology and the science of how to keep them, how to keep them.

So, and it's wild to see the difference. If I, if we give him some time to play a game on his iPad, you, I have to repeat or go over and take from him or say, okay, one minute, then you're off. If I am playing in Nintendo, I can literally middle of the level hit pause and say, oh, let's go. And he'll just walk away from it. It's wild to see the difference of that. And so I've allowed him to do that. Like we play Nintendo day and it's him and I's time together as we'll play Nintendo together. And it's great because it feels if he says he wants to play games, him and dad go upstairs and we go in my room and we play a little bit of regular NES

and I can walk him away from it, no problem. Yeah, I mean, I think all of us are just trying to do the best we can with what, like, you know, and we're just trying to show up. And I think just for that alone, like if you're just trying to show up as a parent, like you're already way ahead of the game. You're already thinking about this stuff.

That's what, what is, Arthur Brooks was famous for saying that. Yeah, he's like, bro, if you're worried and you're thinking about this, like you're ahead of the game. He, it was a, Arthur Brooks, good friend of ours. By the way, if you've never met Arthur Brooks was saying. Yeah, he's like, bro, if you're worried and you're thinking about this, like you're ahead of the game. He was a Arthur Brooks, good friend of ours. By the way, if you've never met Arthur Brooks, you have to meet him. I think he's one of the most amazing humans. Harvard professor, expert on what makes people happy, economist. I mean, the guy's written, best-selling author and brilliant. He got into an Uber one time and a new dad asked him that,

was asking him about that. Since obviously he's this Harvard professor, brilliant guy, and he studies all this, he says, hey, I'm just, I asking him about that. Since obviously he's this Harvard professor, brilliant guy and he studies all this. He says, hey, I'm just, I want to be the best father. What's, you know, asking him like, what are the best five tips with that? And he says, you're already halfway there. And he's like, what are you talking about? My son's not even born yet.

I would tell you, he's like, the fact that you care is already half the battle. So like, you're already going to be a good dad. It's a matter of like, how good of a dad you're going to be at this point. I was like, oh man, that feels so good. Just to hear that because we do, sometimes we can beat ourselves up so much of like, am I doing this right? Should I restrict it completely? The fact that you think about it,

you've already won most of the battle right there. Cause so many parents don't even fucking think about it. Yeah, man. That's all that's in your control too. Like, especially like with everything going on right now, I'm just thinking like what's, you know, taking a day by day, focusing on what's in our control and really just trying to have a positive outlook. And, and I think those are the things that like are within your control.

Like, and you learn those from competing in sport. Like if you worry about your competitors, if you worry about the whatever, like, you're never going to do well cause you're, you're, you're anxious over something you have zero control over. Like, you know, 100% Jason, good time seeing you, man. Yeah. Appreciate you coming on the show.

Yeah, great to have you on. Yeah. And thank you so much for sharing what you're sharing with us. Yeah. Hey, here we are. Always good time seeing you, bro. Always good time. Thanks again. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MinePumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS anabolic, MAPS performance and MAPS aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert, exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MinePumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.